Dead or Alive

by Trevion Burns

  “Remember when I was a kid, and I wanted to be a ballerina?”

  Violet instantly smiled, unable to help herself.

  Jackie took her silence as answer enough. “And remember how fucking horrible I was at it?”

  Violet’s smile grew.

  “Daddy had no problem telling me how fucking horrible I was,” Jackie’s eyes fell to Violet’s clenched hands, and she covered them with her own. “I’ll never forget what you used to say to me, whenever he felt the need to tear me down.”

  “Which was always,” Violet said.

  Jackie nodded. “You used to tell me there are always going to be people in this world in a hurry to tell you what you’re doing wrong. That everything you believe is crazy. Always. That goes double for our father.” Jackie squeezed Violet’s hands. “What’s important is that you don’t allow yourself to become one of those people. You have to have trust in yourself…” Jackie’s eyes softened. “I trust you, Sis.”

  “You do?”

  Jackie produced a set of keys from her back pocket, and pressed them into Violet’s hand. “I disabled the alarm for the backdoor downstairs, but keep the code in your head, just in case. Rodney has our Nissan parked at the corner of Court St. The cops watching the house always go for coffee five minutes to the hour, every hour. Always. They’re creatures of habit.”

  Violet took in her sister with wide eyes full of disbelief.

  “Now go do what you do best.” Jackie smiled. “And prove them all wrong.”

  11

  Violet waited until the dead of night, until she could hear her father’s infamous snores reverberating through the halls, before she snuck to the backdoor downstairs. As promised, Jackie had already disabled the alarm, and she pushed through it as quietly as she could. The grass at her feet was wet and soaked through her low-top black and white chucks easily as she raced across it.

  Circling around the back of the house, she made the effort to climb the tall fence, terrified that her father had even managed to arm that door, as well. After clearing it, she swept the jagged shards of wood from her khaki shorts and white t-shirt before jetting down to the corner of Court St. as quickly as her legs would allow.

  Rodney’s black Nissan Altima came into her view immediately, and she moved into the drivers seat as quickly as her wobbling legs would allow, her wide eyes searching the deserted street of their quiet neighborhood frantically. Jackie had been right. It was five minutes to the hour, and the cops who’d been assigned to keep watch on their house were nowhere in sight. Still, she found herself waiting for her father to come blasting around the corner any second.

  Fear gripped her heart even as she turned the key in the ignition.

  She was free, but it certainly didn’t feel like it.

  As she pulled away from the curb, it occurred to her that she would never feel free again until she found the truth. She was now a fugitive right along with Remy, held prisoner by her love for him, and by the fear of watching him burn for something he didn’t do.

  She pressed her foot to the pedal in time with her rapidly rising heartbeat, guiding the quiet car in the only direction she could think of.

  ***

  Miles squinted against the porch light he’d flicked on as he opened the front door of his house, and he couldn’t calm the immediate reaction he instantly had whenever he came face to face with Violet Chambers.

  Violet stood before him, her chest rising and falling so rapidly that her full lips remained parted just to give the violent breaths someplace to go. She looked like a fugitive herself--frantic eyes, clenched fists, the alarming inability to catch her wild breath and get it under control. Just looking at her was anxiety inducing. She held his eyes, but didn’t speak.

  So Miles spoke for her, running the palm of his hand over his sleepy eyes. “Violet, I don’t know how you got here, but your father told me he was keeping you on house arrest. He told me to call him, or the police, if I saw you--the second I saw you.”

  “Miles,” Violet said. “Do you remember that day my father came to visit me at the news station all those years ago? How he turned his nose up at everything? How he had a negative opinion of everything? How he called the entire institution of journalism a “damn joke,” and even had a few choice words to say about your height and your mother?”

  Miles’ face suddenly crunched. “Damn, I almost forgot about that. He was pretty pissed you were working there.” Miles was impressed at her father’s ability to, in two short days, make him completely forget about what a judgmental jackass he’d been about something that Miles regarded as his lifelong career.

  As if reading his mind, Violet nodded. “He has an amazing ability to charm people, even people he’s disrespected in the past, and make them forget about what an insulting prick he is if it’s in the name of his own agenda. But he’s wrong on this, Miles. Everyone is.”

  Miles sighed deeply. “Your Dad is… special, Violet, yeah. But he’s worried about you. I’m worried.”

  “Don’t be.”

  “Oh, okay.” He smiled easily. “Well, you convinced me.”

  The irony in his voice grated at her, but she pushed it aside. “Which one of us are you going to be more loyal to, Miles? Huh? Your best friend and coworker, Violet? Or my father? A man who called your mother a criminal for ‘having the audacity to give birth to a cameraman? Because we all know the world has enough of those to last a lifetime?’ ”

  Miles hissed out an angry sound through his teeth, and his smile was now laced with irritation. Violet was paraphrasing something her father had actually said to him, but it was close enough to remind Miles of just what a prick her father actually was. When his eyes met hers, he shook his head. “You don’t have to manipulate me like this. Just tell me what you need, Violet, and it’s yours.”

  “I need to see the hotel’s video footage from the night Meredith was murdered. I need to see it for myself.”

  “Violet…”

  “That’s all I’m asking for, Miles. Please.”

  Miles held her eyes, then sighed heavily.

  ***

  “All right,” Miles whispered gently, twenty minutes later, as he and Violet sat crouched over his work computer at the station. At 3am, the halls were dark and quiet, but they both knew they only had another good hour before somebody showed up. The news never stopped, so the station rarely went empty for long. With a convicted murderer on the loose, it was a miracle that it was empty, at all, and Violet and Miles knew time was of the essence.

  Miles pulled up the grainy, trembling footage from the hotel the night Meredith was murdered. Pressing play, he shot Violet a look, taking in her frantic eyes as they danced across the computer screen. With concern in his own eyes, he went back to the screen, as well.

  With a pounding heart, Violet waited for Miles as he fast-forwarded the video. From the jumbled images, she could see that the hotel had an open floor plan, so the door of every room was visible. As Miles fast-forwarded, images of hotel patrons coming and going, housekeepers pushing carts, and elevators climbing up and down the massive open floor plan of the hotel jumped into Violet’s view. When Miles suddenly pressed play, she almost threw up.

  There it was. Moving coolly down the deserted hall was a tall man in full pilot uniform, hat and all. Violet’s eyes widened, frustrated that the camera only seemed to be catching his backside where, to her heartbreak, a valley of dirty-blonde hair peaked out from under the hat. From the back, he did look very much like Remy.

  “Do we have this from any other angle?”

  “This is the only one.” Miles whispered.

  “This is what put Remy in jail? Seriously? We can’t even see this guy’s face--” Her words came to an abrupt halt when the man came to a stop at Room 235, Meredith’s room. Before knocking, he paused to look down the hall, both ways, to be sure the coast was clear.

  Miles paused the video just as the man nearly looked straight at the camera.

  And Violet’s heart plummeted. �
�The image quality is not acceptable. It’s grainy. It’s shaky. It’s--”

  “Remy,” Miles finished, amazed at just how profound her denial had become. The urge to save her from its depths tightened his skin, but he could see she was beyond saving. There was no fishing her out. She’d already sunk far too deep.

  “It’s not a clear picture of his face. Just because he has blonde hair, and blue eyes and alarmingly similar bone structure--”

  “And eyewitness accounts from hotel employees? Saying they saw him walking into the room? And accounts that he and Meredith had a falling out on the plane? What more do you need, Violet? He did this. It’s right here. It’s clear as day. It’s Remington Archibald.”

  “We don’t know that… it could be… someone who just looks like him. It could be…” The sensation of her soul crashing to her feet was too much, and Violet had to push away from the table, bringing her fist to her mouth as tears hit her eyes.

  She couldn’t believe it.

  She wouldn’t.

  Her heart wouldn’t let her.

  Had she been wrong all along?

  Was Remy a murderer?

  ***

  Hitchhiking had been a risk. A huge risk. It had been a little under 24 hours since Remy had abandoned the white pick up truck on the side of a deserted, grassy road. He had no doubt that Violet was home by now, probably being interrogated by the police about their three weeks together. Those three weeks suddenly felt like three seconds.

  He tried to take a deep breath, but his body wouldn’t allow it. It was as if he were constantly on the verge of complete collapse. Every time her face popped into his head, his lungs responded by closing up immediately.

  She’d used him. Lied to him. Made him believe he had something left to hope for.

  All for her fucking career.

  As Remy climbed out of the eighteen-wheeler that had picked him up on the side of the road hours ago, he acknowledged his thanks to the driver with a simple wave of his hand. If the old, hunchbacked, ever-so-slightly racist trucker recognized Remy, he hadn’t shown it. From the short time he’d spent listening to the man ramble on, Remy doubted he would even care if he had.

  It had been a huge risk to hitchhike, one he would’ve almost certainly never taken before he met Violet Chambers, but he’d gotten lucky by finding a trucker who hadn’t one shit to give. Even if that trucker had recognized him and turned him in, Remy wasn’t sure if he’d even have the capacity to care.

  He didn’t have anything left to fight for.

  He knew it was insane. What in the world was the point of swiping a gun, and taking that 100-pound monster of a woman out of the courthouse, if he wasn’t ready to fight? He had been ready to fight, until he’d held her in his arms, learned the warmth of her embrace… made love to her for the first time.

  He realized that what he’d been fighting for was the home he’d made with Violet.

  A home that had never really existed.

  What was left to fight for? He simply didn’t know. He couldn’t feel anything apart from the pain, the anger, and the horror that blazed through him every time he thought of her—which was every waking moment, since the second he’d heard her call him a guilty man. When she hadn’t realized he’d been listening.

  “He’s guilty.”

  His eyes cried out in pain as tears flashed across them, and he tried to breathe again.

  His lungs squeezed shut once more.

  Pulling the Yankees hat that Violet had plopped on his head just before she’d kissed him for the first time, down further on his forehead, he began making his way across the street to the shoddy bar in the distance. He’d asked the driver to drop him off near the smallest town outside of Santa Cruz, and though he didn’t have any money, his tongue soaked for just one sip of scotch.

  The bell above the door chimed to life when he stepped into the bar and, to his complete relief, it was just as much of a deserted shithole as he prayed it would be. The bulky, tattooed bartender gave him a passing glance, just long enough to toss him a nod with boredom gleaming in his eyes. At the tail end of the bar was an old degenerate with yellow eyes and tired skin, staring vacantly into an empty glass. Above the shelves of dirty liquor bottles consisting mostly of gins and whiskeys, an ancient 10-inch television played on mute with garbled subtitles running across the bottom of the screen. Country music played softly in the background.

  Remy made his way to the darkest booth in the corner and collapsed against the wall. He was exhausted. He needed a shower.

  He needed to prove his innocence, but he had no idea how.

  He didn’t care.

  He pulled open the duffle bag in his lap for the first time, having grabbed it in his panicked mad dash out of Violet’s house. He’d remembered that she’d packed away every essential they’d need in that bag, gun, map, food, clothes, meds. It was all there.

  Still, the moment he opened it, he wished he hadn’t.

  Her scent permeated up from inside the bag with such potency he almost expected her to pop out from inside of it with those big eyes and that sweet smile, asking him when he was going to get it, explaining to him that she didn’t think him guilty. That she really had loved him all along, the way she’d always said.

  As if that wasn’t torture enough, just as the thought of her filled him so completely it was a wonder she wasn’t right there next to him, the strings of Dolly Parton came wafting from the old radio at the bar, through the air, and may as well have seized him right around the neck.

  Dolly’s sweet voice was like sugary torture, stealing his composure as she purred the lyrics he’d sang in Violet’s ear the night they’d danced together.

  Before he knew it, he’d exploded into quiet sobs that shook him to his core, leaving him in a softly vibrating heap in the booth, longing for Violet’s touch, for her faith, her trust, and loathing his foolish heart for mourning something he’d never truly had.

  ***

  “It just doesn’t make any sense,” Violet mumbled, motioning to the video that Miles had rewound for what had to be the hundredth time.

  Miles was tired, but he was also patient, and if getting Violet to understand that this man was a murderer meant rewinding this video until every one of his fingers fell off, then he’d be happy to start using his toes. From where he was leaning back in his rolley chair, off in his own world, his eyes went to Violet’s determined face, running over her clenched eyebrows and her full bottom lip, which was currently trapped between her teeth as she glared at the screen.

  “What doesn’t make sense?” he asked.

  “Clearly this man was going to her room with the intent of murdering her.”

  “Yes, clearly Remy was.” Miles didn’t miss the way she kept referring to Remy as “this man” or “the killer”, so Miles was all too happy to throw his name into the mix incessantly until she got it right. “Yes, clearly Remy was going to her room with the intent of killing her, because he was checking--”

  “Checking for witnesses,” Violet finished Miles’ thoughts, the way she often did. “He was looking down the hallway to make sure no one was around to see him go in.”

  “Yeah, that’s what killers usually do.”

  “But why?” Violet demanded. “If he didn’t want witnesses, if he didn’t want anyone to know it was him, why would Remy wear his work uniform on his way into Meredith’s room? Knowing that he was going to kill her? He wanted to be seen. Why else would he incriminate himself that way?”

  The moment she asked the question, Miles’ eyebrows rose slightly. It was a valid point.

  “I know if I’m going to murder someone, I’m going in full hazmat gear, okay? Head to toe in a paper suit, surgical cap, face mask and goggles. I’m going to make damn sure that nobody who watches camera footage of me will be able to recognize me in a million years. Why would a known pilot wear his pilot’s uniform into the hotel room of a girl who he’s intending to murder?”

  Miles could only shake his head.


  “I don’t know a single pilot—or person, for that matter--who would do such a ridiculous fucking thing. But I do know who would do such a ridiculous thing. A man who’s trying to--”

  “Frame another man,” Miles finished her sentence this time, and he waited for Violet to get excited about the fact that she’d convinced him, but she was too entranced by the video. “What is it?” he demanded, sitting up in his chair.

  Violet pointed to the video. “Rewind it. Take it about twenty seconds back.”

  Miles did what he was told, then looked back to her, waiting expectantly.

  Tears hit Violet’s eyes, once more, but this time they were tears of joy. “Pause it.”

  Miles paused it.

  “Can you zoom in?”

  Miles zoomed in.

  And now, tears were tumbling out of Violet’s eyes. “Oh my god, Miles.”

  “What?” Miles asked, looking at the frozen image of “Remy” walking down the empty hotel hallway, confused about what it was that had moved Violet to tears.

  “Here. Look at his cuffs. The stripes on his cuffs.” Violet pointed to the image on the screen, hardly able to believe that it had taken her this long to see it. When she saw the perplexed look on Miles’ face intensify, she laughed through her tears. “Three stripes.”

  He shrugged. “And? All pilots have stripes on their cuffs.”

  “Yes, but Captains have four stripes on their cuffs, and first officers have three. Their uniforms are identical, and the stripes are the only thing that distinguishes one from the other. A hotel employee would be very unlikely to know the difference, especially with just a passing glance. Hell, anyone who isn’t in aviation would be very unlikely to know the difference. They look at this man and all they see is El Capitan. But El Capitan would have four stripes, not three.”

  “Oh wow.” With a shake of his head, Miles took in the grainy image of the cuffs on the pilot’s jacket, watching as Violet’s finger went back and forth between each one of them, her nail motioning to each stripe individually. “One, two, three,” he counted them as she moved.